We Are the Stars, Gina Chick, tops 2025 Dymocks Top 101 Book poll

Showing all posts tagged: books

We Are the Stars, Gina Chick, tops 2025 Dymocks Top 101 Book poll

7 April 2025

We Are the Stars, by Australian author Gina Chick, has claimed the number one spot in the 2025 Dymocks Top 101 Books poll. We Are the Stars also enjoys the distinction of being the first work of non-fiction to top the the list in almost twenty years.

Notable fiction inclusions (being titles I’ve also read) in this year’s Top 101 include Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, and Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

Every year, customers of the Australian bookseller vote to determine their favourite titles of the previous twelve months.

Meta using the work of Australian authors to train AI platforms

7 April 2025

Two years ago it was ChatGPT being trained with books written by Australian authors, without their knowledge or permission. Now Facebook owner Meta is doing the same thing: using the works of local writers without permission or royalty.

A number of Australian authors, including Sophie Cunningham, Hannah Kent, Tim Winton, Helen Garner, and Alexis Wright, using a tool developed by The Atlantic, have found their work has been added to LibGen, a database Meta is using to “train” its generative AI platform.

The company claims their use of the novels constitutes fair use, as, apparently, only “limited” amounts of copyright material is being used.

If the Meta AI technology in question is what I saw on Instagram a day or two ago, on the search tab, then it’s not much to write home about. I typed my name in to see what would happen, something that appeared to stump the AI platform.

Instead of saying something about me, someone’s who been online here for over twenty-five years — how could Meta’s AI technology possibly not know about that? — it returned a spiel about an English football player called Frank, who has the same surname as I do.

If the writing of some of Australia’s best authors can’t help the technology figure out what day of the week it is, just how useful is this AI platform going to be?

Does the world no longer need white male authors?

28 March 2025

Jacob Savage, writing for Compact:

Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize — with again, not a single straight white American millennial man.

Have white male authors been over presented for too long? Most likely. Other voices, especially from groups that have been pushed aside for too long, should be heard. But I’m not sure if it can be said that white male writers are intentionally being sidelined. We’re seeing more of the work of people we didn’t previously, and it turns out to be excellent.

RELATED CONTENT

authors, books, literature, writing

Three Dresses by Wanda Gibson, wins 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award

20 March 2025

Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, based Nukgal Wurra woman Wanda Gibson, has won the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, with her book, Three Dresses. Gibson’s win is the first time a children’s title has won the award. In addition, Three Dresses won the Children’s Literature category.

Winners in other categories included Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane, in Fiction, and Black Witness by Amy McQuire, in Indigenous Writing, which is also on the longlist of this year’s Stella Prize.

Gawimarra: Gathering by Jeanine Leane, won the Poetry award, anything can happen by Susan Hampton, collected the Non-Fiction prize, while I Made This Just for You by Chris Ames, won the Unpublished Manuscript award.

Moonboy, a time traveller fears she has changed history, and other books

19 March 2025

In Moonboy by Anna Ciddor, Letty can travel back in time from the room in her present day house, to the same room in 1969, when it is occupied by a boy her age. Letty is able to relive the excitement of the Apollo 11 launch, but fears her jaunts through time might be changing history. Don’t mess with the space-time continuum now. Moonboy might be a kids’ book, but the plot is just my thing.

First Name, Second Name, by Steve MinOn, isn’t a time travel story, nor horror, as a dead man walks back through his family’s turbulent history to claim his identity. Just in time for the imminent Federal election: How Australian Democracy Works, edited by Australian journalist Amanda Dunn. Yes, we need our democracy more than ever, as the byline reminds us.

A troubled young woman takes her mother and grandmother to Peru on a trek to Machu Picchu, thinking the walk will do them all good. But is it a good idea? Or will the amalgam of family secrets that come to light scuttle her plan? That’s Best, First and Last, by Amy Matthews.

Gusty Girls explores the life of late Australian poet Dorothy Porter, written by her younger sister, Josie McSkimming. Careless People, by former Facebook director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, is the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. If that doesn’t scream buy me, what does?

The Australian Book Design Awards 2025 longlist

13 March 2025

This is where we get the once-a-year chance to judge a book by its cover… the longlist for the 2025 Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) was published last week (PDF).

Among numerous inclusions (this is the longlist after all) are covers for Tim Winton’s latest novel, Juice, designed by Adam Laszczuk, and Lucinda Froomes Price’s book All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot, designed by Katherine Zhang, of Sydney based Australian design house Evi-O.Studio.

The winners will be announced on Friday 23 May 2025.

RELATED CONTENT

Australian literature, books, design

Signs of Damage, a new novel by Australian author Diana Reid

5 March 2025

Signs of Damage is the third novel from London based Australian author Diana Reid.

The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.

Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what’s wrong with her now?

I’ve read Reid’s 2021 debut Love & Virtue and have her second, novel Seeing Other People, published in 2022, on my (lengthy) TBR list. Signs of Damage will be published later this month.

Somebody Down There Likes Me, a new novel by Robert Lukins

19 February 2025

Melbourne based Australian author Robert Lukins returns with a new novel, Somebody Down There Likes Me, a follow up to his 2022 book, Loveland.

As with Loveland and his 2018 debut, The Everlasting Sunday, Somebody Down There Likes Me, is set outside Australia, this time in a town called Belle Haven, in Connecticut, in the United States, during the final years of the twentieth-century:

Against the backdrop of the last decadent gasps of the twentieth century, the Gulch family have led a charmed existence in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Connecticut. Now, the empire they have built is on the edge of collapse, and as the decades of fraud and criminality that lie beneath the family’s incredible wealth is exposed, the Gulch children are summoned.

I read Loveland a couple of years ago, and look forward to Somebody Down There Likes Me. I must also get hold of The Everlasting Sunday as well.

Book publisher Simon & Schuster says no to celebrity blurbs

17 February 2025

Lucy Knight, writing for The Guardian:

[] soon we may not see so many of these author blurbs — Sean Manning, publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US, has written an essay for Publishers Weekly explaining that as of this year he will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.

A celebrity blurb is where a well known author offers some brief praise for the work of a new, or not so well known, writer. Examples could be something like: “a veritable page-turner”, or “a forceful new talent”. But it’s not always clear whether the author offering the endorsement has even read the book in question. That’s one reason why I take a dim view of celebrity blurbs.

I’m more interested in a novel’s synopsis, and then — where possible — seeking out some consensus as to whether the book is good or bad, through a website like Hardcover. After all, life is too short to spend reading novels you might not like.

But what surprises, and irks me, is that blurb is an official book publishing term. It sounds like a colloquialism, which it very much is, but it seems like a word people use because they don’t know the correct term to use. Sarney is a colloquialism, but sandwich is what is meant.

Wikipedia defines a blurb as a “a short promotional piece“, and celebrity endorsements aside, are usually more a short, yet enticing, summary of a novel. Here is the publisher’s blurb for Christian White’s most recent novel, The Ledge, which I wrote about last week:

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered. It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed. In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.

That’s more like a synopsis, or even a summary, albeit with a promotional bent. Films are marketed with a similar sort of write-up, but synopsis is usually the go-to term, even though people sometimes call them blurbs. But blurb sounds like the sort of word I might otherwise be, maybe with some trepidation, looking up on Urban Dictionary.

Henceforth, I shall do away with the blubbery blurb, and go with synopsis or summary.

RELATED CONTENT

books, language, novels, publishing

The Ledge, a thriller by Australian author Christian White

12 February 2025

A disturbing development in a twenty-five year old missing persons case sees a group of old school friends reluctantly reunite. All have reason to be fearful of the re-opened police investigation, and all are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure they are not incriminated. It’s not easy to be sure who to trust, or exactly who knows what about that tragic day many years earlier in 1999.

The Ledge wouldn’t be a Christian White novel if it didn’t feature a twist that leaves you breathless, and wondering whether you’ve been paying attention. White’s fourth novel will not let you down.

I read The Ledge in three days, a sprint compared to my usual glacial pace, often reading until two or three in the morning. Calling this a page-turner is an understatement.

I also suggest you read White’s earlier novels, The Nowhere Child, his debut, and The Wife and the Widow, his second novel, which in trademark style, are also set across dual timelines. I’m yet to read his third novel, Wild Places, published in 2022. I’ll need to catch up on some sleep before then.

« older posts